


linger like a tattoo kiss

by ikeracity



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Getting Back Together, M/M, Separation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:07:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25792606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeracity/pseuds/ikeracity
Summary: Six months apart gives Erik a lot of time to think about what he really wants.(Erik's POV from Carry Me Anew (Frost & Darkholme Remix) by kianspo)
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr/Original Male Character
Comments: 44
Kudos: 238





	linger like a tattoo kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kianspo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kianspo/gifts), [Gerec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Carry Me Anew (Frost & Darkholme Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24999775) by [kianspo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kianspo/pseuds/kianspo). 



> I read Carry Me Anew and was instantaneously struck by the need to see Erik's POV. With kianspo's gracious permission, here are all my messy Erik POV thoughts spilled out on the page, unbeta-ed as everything I write is. Please read that fic first or else this one won't make much sense!
> 
> Also I listened to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJPHaJFeZhY) on a loop for about four hours as I wrote this, so put it on for mood music. The lyrics are really _so_ perfect for kianspo's fic.

The loft is…emptier than Erik remembers it being.

He’d rented it furnished when he’d first moved back to New York to start modeling, so all the furniture and ornaments are unchanged. All throughout the loft hang those same tasteful wall decorations that he’s always found bland and boring but never had the inclination to change. In the living room area, there’s the familiar sleek white couch where he used to eat most of his dinners, preferring it to the high dining table in the corner of the room. There’s the oversized flatscreen TV, the plush square rugs covering nearly every inch of the hardwood flooring, the stainless steel kitchen appliances that he’s always liked. He knows there have been other tenants since he moved out, but it doesn’t feel like it. Nothing’s changed.

He’s glad for it at first, for the familiarity. When he’d looked up his old place and found it currently available for rent, he’d jumped at the listing, figuring that if he had to move, he’d at least be comfortable in a place he knew. But gradually, he starts to realize that it’s all _too_ familiar. Everywhere he looks, he sees Charles. They used to sit on that couch together, Charles dozing with his head on Erik’s lap while Erik stroked his hair idly and thumbed through a book. Charles’s empty mugs of tea used to clutter the coffee table and leave rings on the glass because he could never remember to use a coaster, even after Erik reminded him a thousand times. After long days at work, Charles used to surprise him with takeout, plating the food and setting it out neatly on the dining table and playacting as a server at some three star Michelin restaurant, grinning devilishly until Erik laughed.

Those memories hurt, a constant, throbbing ache in Erik’s chest that won’t relent no matter how much he tries to ignore it. What hurts worse is knowing that it’s his fault. It’s his fucking fault that he’s here in this empty, lifeless loft by himself when by all rights he should be home with Charles.

He’s guilty. And then he’s angry at feeling guilty because there’s nothing to be guilty _for_. Charles had said it himself — it’s not his fault, it’s nobody’s fault, it’s human nature. He hadn’t actually _done_ anything with Simon. Fuck, the kid had been giving him bedroom eyes since the second Raven introduced them and they’d shaken hands, but Erik hadn’t let it _go_ anywhere.

(Even though it could have. Even though he knows that if he’d stepped outside the studio after the shoot and gestured for Simon to follow, the boy would have followed him anywhere.)

Things like this happen all the time. Just because he’s been in a committed relationship for eight years doesn’t mean he’s somehow lost the ability to gauge the attractiveness of other people. Simon’s hot — so fucking what? Erik hadn’t dragged the kid into a back room and fucked his brains out, even though that had been the only coherent thought running through his head throughout the entire shoot, especially after they’d gotten that shot of Simon on his knees. It would have been so easy to, but Erik _hadn’t_.

And now Charles is pissed at him for doing nothing at all, and Erik wants very badly to break something.

He goes to work. Charles has made good on his promise and distanced himself with anything to do with Erik — he hears through the grapevine that Charles has shifted his focus to working with Emma on the F&D restaurants, which is about as far from the marketing sector as he could possibly get. Fine, Erik thinks, irritated. If Charles wants to be that way, then fine. Erik’s going to be a professional and mind his own fucking business.

Raven corners him a week after the separation. He’s in the changing room tugging off the cashmere sweater they’d put him in for the morning (a sweater that would suit Charles much more than it does him, but Erik buries that thought as soon as it surfaces) when the door opens and Raven steps in. She’s not usually in the studio unless it’s a big shoot or the models are new, neither of which is the case right now, so Erik lifts an eyebrow at her inquisitively.

“Erik, I…” After a beat of hesitation, she shuts the door behind herself and comes further into the room toward him. “I talked to Charles.”

He can feel his expression shutter. “Oh.”

Raven bites her lip for a second, a gesture so reminiscent of Charles that Erik looks away. After a pause, she blurts out, “I’m _so_ sorry. I never thought anything like this would happen. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have put you together with Simon. That was my mistake and I — ”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“What?”

Something hard and firm and cold coalesces in Erik’s chest, smothering the ache that’s been nagging at him ever since Charles had said, _I think we need to take a break._

“How could you have possibly known?” he asks coolly, reaching for his clothes. “You were doing your job. I was doing mine. Charles is the only one who seems to have a problem with that.”

He can feel her surprise even though he’s busying himself with changing. There’s a long silence as he pulls on his jeans and his shirt and bends down to tie up the laces on his boots. When he straightens and meets her eyes again at last, Raven’s expression is — complicated.

“You really are a dick, aren’t you,” she says, and even though she’s said that exact same thing to him before, it had always been with an edge of amusement and admiration. Now she sounds genuinely disgusted. 

Angry suddenly, Erik glowers at her. “What do you want me to do? Apologize for doing my job? For doing it _well?_ ”

“You hurt him!” Raven snaps. “You’re not even the least bit sorry for that?”

“How was it _my_ fault?”

“It wasn’t but — don’t you think it’s kind of heartless to not feel bad at all? Charles is fucking miserable!”

“Well,” Erik says coldly, “I wasn’t the one who said we should take a break over nothing.”

He gathers up his things and stalks out, ignoring the scathing glare she shoots after him.

That night, he tracks down Simon’s number. It’s not hard — he’s got a profile on the F&D page that has a contact email, and some rudimentary searching through his LinkedIn and a subsequent social media dive turns up a phone number. Erik gets as far as typing the number into his phone and then — stops.

If he does this, there’s no going back. There’s no telling himself anymore that he didn’t _do_ anything, that he wasn’t truly that attracted to Simon after all, that Charles had been overreacting over something that never even fucking existed.

But they’d agreed. Charles had said, “Since we’re going to be separated, there’s no reason why we can’t see other people,” and Erik had nodded.

(He tries not to remember how Charles had looked absolutely broken as he’d said it. He’d tried to hide it behind a steady, neutral façade, but Erik’s always been able to tell when Charles is only trying to be brave.)

His finger hovers over the call button. He imagines how it would play out. Would they make small talk? Would they even need to? How many words would it take to have Simon stumbling over here like an eager puppy on a leash, tripping over himself to get Erik’s cock in his mouth? God knows he’d wanted it — the look in his eyes when he’d stared adoringly up at Erik from his knees, his hands clenched on his thighs like he was stopping himself from reaching out — that look had nearly shattered Erik’s control. It’s all too easy now to imagine playing that scene out in private this time, guiding Simon’s head forward, pressing his crotch against the boy’s face, feeling his tongue mouthing at the outline of Erik’s erection through his underwear…

Erik takes an unsteady breath and lays his free hand flat on his knee so he doesn’t reach for his half-hard cock. Instead of pressing call, he saves the number to his contacts and goes to take a cold shower.

He resists for two months. Simon’s number sits in his contacts, untouched but impossible to ignore. Every time Erik’s gaze skims over it, a twinge of guilt makes him wince. But he doesn’t delete it.

He’s scrolling through Instagram one afternoon in search for the contact info for one of the photographers he’d worked with last year when his fingers stutter to a stop. After two months of absolutely no contact, the sight of Charles has his heart leaping into his throat. For a second, Erik’s convinced it’s an old picture — he hasn’t seen Charles dressed like this in years, in a loose grey tank top, black jeans that look practically painted on, and a snug black choker that draws attention straight to his pale throat and sharp collarbones. His hair is artfully mussed, and someone’s expertly applied eyeliner for him, because God knows Charles can never put his own eyeliner on without it turning out uneven. Emma leans into his side, one arm around his waist as she tugs at his earlobe with her teeth.

But it’s not an old picture. A judder of shock runs through him when he realizes that Emma had posted the photo yesterday. The caption reads: _Miss seeing this angel in our catalog? Me too #CharlieX #F &DModels #NightsOut_

Charles only dresses like that when he’s going out hoping to pick someone up. They’ve played out that fantasy a dozen times over the last eight years — both of them getting dressed up, going out, pretending to run into each other at a bar or a club, Erik enduring Charles’s terrible flirting for a while before dragging him home to fuck like rabbits. It’s always a good time when they’re both in the mood for it, and Erik’s never regarded it as anything other than harmless fun.

Except last night Charles had gotten dressed up to meet someone else. He wasn’t playacting a seduction, he was going to seduce someone in earnest, and Erik knows deep down to his bones that Charles hadn’t gone home emptyhanded. Charles is a fucking wet dream, anyone with eyes can see that, and some particularly bold bastard had probably plucked up the courage to sidle down the bar and strike up a conversation and Charles said something nerdy and funny and stupidly charming all at once and after that —

Had Charles brought him back to the apartment? Had Charles come crying out another man’s name in the bed he and Erik had shared for the last eight years?

He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until he hears his own breath coming out short and shallow between his teeth. Fury pulses through him in sharp stabs. Erik had only _thought_ about it. Now Charles has gone and _done_ it, done the very thing he’d condemned Erik for. It doesn’t matter what the terms of their separation had been, Erik had never actually thought Charles _would_ …

Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s pulling up Simon’s number. He’s dialing and then waiting and then, after only a couple of rings, Simon’s voice says, “Hello?”

“It’s Erik. From work.”

“O…oh! Erik! Hi! How are you?”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing really, I was just sitting on the couch — ”

“Want to come over?”

There’s a long, shocked silence. Then Simon says hesitantly, “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

Another silence. Then: “Aren’t you and Charles…”

“Not anymore,” Erik says brusquely. “Listen, I know what I felt when we did that shoot together. If you’re still interested — ”

“Um, _yes_. I’ve only been fantasizing about this ever since the day we met.”

For some reason, that makes Erik angrier. Gritting his teeth, he says, “Thirty minutes? I’ll text you the address,” and hangs up after Simon blurts out, “Yes!”

Getting up, Erik paces the length of his loft restlessly, a dark, uncomfortable energy crawling under his skin. His mind keeps flashing back to the thought of Charles in those fucking jeans, the way the fabric had hugged his ass so perfectly, what it must have been like for Charles’s date to peel him out of them, revealing the lovely freckled skin that Erik knows every inch of. What had they done? Had they stopped at oral? Had Charles let him fuck him? Had he stayed over for breakfast? Are they having dinner together even now, Charles pouring wine while pretending to be a snooty sommelier to make his date laugh?

A knock on the door yanks him out of his head. Simmering with rage, Erik strides for the door, jerks it open, and — stops.

Simon is dressed in tight-fitting jeans, an equally tight t-shirt, and a leather jacket. His hair is slicked back, and he must have put something on his lips because they’re cherry-red and shining. And yet, despite the sultry outfit, his eyes are wide and innocent, and he smiles at Erik with something bordering on shyness.

“Hi,” he says. He lifts the bottle of whiskey in his hands. “I thought I should bring something.”

It’s something from a shitty label that probably cost eleven dollars at a bodega. Charles would never allow such a bottle in their kitchen — he hadn’t inherited much from his mother, but her impeccable taste in alcohol _had_ found its way into his psyche. In the eight years they’ve been together, Erik hasn’t seen Charles drink anything that cost less than fifty dollars a bottle.

Somehow, that bottle of shitty whiskey settles the storm in Erik’s chest somewhat. Reaching out to take it, he says, “Come in. I’ll get some glasses.”

When he reemerges from the kitchen with a whiskey glass in each hand, Simon is wandering around the loft, hands in his pockets as he studies the art on the walls. Hearing Erik’s footsteps behind him, he turns and gives a little grin. “Did you decorate this place yourself?”

“No. It came furnished.”

“Oh. Good. Because that — ” He points to the black, indistinct, writhing sculpture mounted over the TV that passes for abstract art. “ — is terrible.”

Erik finds himself laughing. “Yeah, it is. Haven’t gotten around to taking it down though.” He holds a glass out. “Are you even old enough to drink?”

Simon wrinkles his nose. “I’m twenty-two.”

Two years older than Charles had been when they’d first met.

Shaking away the thought, Erik says, “Sit. Make yourself comfortable.”

Simon settles on one end of the couch, and Erik takes the other. There’s some space between them but not much — Erik could reach out to lay his hand on Simon’s thigh if he wanted, or Simon could lean in and touch Erik’s knee, or higher…

“I decided to go into modeling because of you, you know,” Simon says, sipping at his whiskey. When Erik raises an eyebrow, he blushes and says into his glass, “I used to collect every magazine that had you in it. Men’s Vogue, June 2014. That one was my favorite. I had you as my lock screen for the longest time. I signed with F&D mostly because I wanted to get the chance to work with you.” He glances up, reddening even further. “You were the whole reason I realized I was gay.”

Erik takes a huge gulp of his whiskey to avoid answering for a moment. He’d never set out to be a model. He’d been scouted by a talent agency at an age when he’d been young and vulnerable and completely broke, and he’d desperately needed the cash. He had never believed that he’d ever get as big as he had, and he’s never quite adjusted to the fame. Intellectually, he knows that more than a few teens probably have his photos printed out and taped to their bedroom walls, but meeting one of his “fans” face to face — that’s an entirely different thing altogether. 

“I’m glad I could help,” he says finally, awkwardly. He can’t help thinking for a split second that Charles would know what to say — Charles is _good_ at things like this.

Simon beams. “Honestly, working with you was a dream come true. And when I realized…” His hands tremble for a moment on his glass of whiskey. It’s nearly empty, Erik realizes — Simon’s been sipping nervously for the last five minutes. Leaning forward, he starts to set the glass on the coffee table, then pauses. “Um, do you have a coaster?”

Wordlessly, Erik points to the stack of them under the table. He watches as Simon carefully pulls one out and sets his glass down. Then he turns to Erik and smooths his hands down his thighs, taking an audibly shaky breath. “When I realized you were, um…you were _into_ me, I was hoping…but then you left without saying anything after the shoot and I thought maybe I’d misread things. And then you called…”

Erik takes a coaster for himself and puts his own glass down. Then he seizes Simon by the lapels of his leather jacket and reels him in.

It’s good at first. Simon doesn’t kiss like Charles at all — he’s fumbling and awkward and Erik is pleased to be able to take charge, to guide him into kissing more comfortably, not so much teeth, less hair-pulling. The boy’s sweet and malleable, willing to let Erik maneuver him to his satisfaction. He moans when Erik’s teeth scrapes his nipple. His hands clutch at Erik’s shoulders, his chest and belly heaving as Erik works his way down his torso.

“Have you ever done this before?” Erik asks as he tugs at Simon’s belt.

Simon stares down at him, eyes wide. “Y-yeah. Not a lot but…I’ve done it before.”

Good. Erik has no patience to deal with being gentle with a virgin right now. He yanks at Simon’s jeans, struggling a little because they’re so goddamn tight. _Was this what it was like last night for Charles?_ whispers that insidious voice in the back of his head. _You’ve seen jeans like that on him, you’ve taken them_ off _him, you know exactly what it’s like —_

With a growl, he ruthlessly cuts off that train of thought. He is _not_ going to think of Charles while he’s having sex with Simon. He’s not going to fucking do that.

Yet hadn’t he done it the other way around? Hadn’t he thought of Simon that night he’d come home after the shoot? Hadn’t he rutted against Charles’s pale belly with his head pressed against Charles’s shoulder so he couldn’t see Charles’s face, so he could imagine Simon’s instead, his green eyes bright and adoring as he stared up at Erik, as trusting and gentle as a lamb’s?

“Erik?”

He realizes he’s gone still, frozen in the act of pulling Simon’s jeans the rest of the way off.

Fuck. _Fuck_. He’s allowed to do this. They’d _agreed_ he could do this. He shouldn’t feel guilty about any of this because Charles had ordered their separation, Charles had gone out and found someone new to fuck only two months later, this is Charles’s fucking fault at this point.

 _You wanted this_ , he thinks viciously at the echo of Charles who lives in his head. _You fucking made this happen_.

“If you don’t want — ” Simon starts.

Erik kisses him with enough force to bruise. He’s going to enjoy this. God knows Charles probably enjoyed last night.

But he can’t. Charles is everywhere, even when he’s not. He strips off Simon’s clothes and all he can think is that there aren’t any freckles anywhere, which is strange. Simon’s got hair on his chest, pale and wiry, and it scratches at Erik’s face when he ranges down over Simon’s body. Simon has a birthmark on his hip that confuses Erik’s senses for a moment because there isn’t supposed to be one there. And he has a tattoo on his thigh that Erik keeps covered with his hand, because it’s a reminder that this isn’t Charles.

Simon makes a soft, gasping sound when Erik bottoms out in him. “Holy shit,” he breathes out, “I knew you were huge,” and Erik resists the urge to clap a hand over his mouth because he’s ruining it with that grating Californian accent. Erik fucks him for a while like that, hunched over him like they’re rutting animals, and Simon keeps making high, pleased noises that don’t sound like Charles at all, and Erik feels his arousal start to flag. Clenching his teeth, he drives into Simon harder, hard enough to make the boy dig his nails into Erik’s back, sharp points of welcome pain. But he can’t come. He keeps looking at Simon’s face, at his open mouth and freckle-less nose and not-blue eyes, and everything in him shudders in despair.

“Hey are you…” Simon says softly.

Erik realizes he’s stopped again. A nearly imperceptible tremble runs through his frame. When Simon opens his mouth again, Erik presses his forehead against Simon’s shoulder, doing his damnedest to pretend that it’s Charles underneath him, Charles’s hands clutching at his shoulders, Charles’s soft voice urging him to his climax.

The irony is enough to make him nearly sob.

When it’s over, Simon collects his clothes quietly and gets dressed. Once he’s slid his leather jacket back on, he stands at the end of the couch, seemingly at a loss for words. At last, awkwardly, he says, “Hey, man, I’m…I’m sorry. I think…” He takes a deep breath. “I think I shouldn’t have come over.”

When Erik looks up at him, the expression on Simon’s face is so knowing and pained that Erik’s throat goes tight.

“I’ll, um…” Simon jerks a thumb toward the door. “I’ll go.”

Erik listens to him slip out, shutting the door quietly behind him. Then he gets up, walks numbly to the kitchen, and drinks the rest of that shitty whiskey straight from the bottle.

*

The next four months pass in a haze of misery. Erik steps back from modeling. He’s in no headspace for it, and Raven must sense something truly off about him because she lets him go on leave without question, without even any sarcastic barb about fucking up.

Life is different without work to shape his days. He goes on a lot of runs, sometimes twice a day. He drinks a lot more than he should. He starts smoking again, even though he’d quit seven years ago at Charles’s insistence.

He sees Charles, once. He’s walking down the street on the way home from the store when he happens to glance across the way into a café and spots Charles sitting at a table across from a handsome blond man. Heart shuddering, he stands and watches them for a long minute, struggling to make sense of this. Charles can’t be on a date. This must be a business meeting of some kind. Maybe it’s one of the new models, except Charles isn’t involved in marketing anymore, is he? And then the man says something that makes Charles laugh out loud, and when the laugh fades into a soft smile, Erik knows. Charles would never smile at a business associate like that.

He has to give Simon credit for one thing: that shitty whiskey is certainly cost effective.

He starts to wonder whether there will be anything to return to after their six months are up. Charles is obviously meeting new people. He’s going on dates. He’s _moving on_ , and that pierces Erik through, like a lance thrust into his heart.

It hadn’t been his fault. Neither had it been Charles’s. Erik _gets it_ now. He remembers the blistering, jealous fury he’d felt when he’d seen Emma’s Instagram post and knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that if their roles had been reversed, if Charles had been the one to fall into dizzyingly, fiery lust with his shoot partner, Erik would not have taken it well at all. Erik would have reacted far, far more badly than Charles had.

Charles hasn’t always felt secure in their relationship. There had been a time early on when he had confessed to Erik once that he was just trying to get as much of Erik as he could, because he knew that one day Erik would leave him for something newer and fresher — something better. Erik had been furious at the accusation until he’d eventually calmed down and drawn the full story out of Raven later: how everyone in Charles’s life had passed him over for someone more interesting, more vibrant, more suitable. Not that Charles isn’t interesting and vibrant and perfect — it’s just that everyone he’s ever dated has been too stupid to see it. Even Charles is too caught up in his own anxieties to see it — he’s been told, explicitly or implicitly, by everyone in his life that he’s not enough, and he’s come to believe it wholeheartedly.

And now Erik, Erik who had quietly sworn to never do that to him, to never make Charles feel as if he was a second choice, or a lesser choice — he’d gone and done exactly that.

Erik spends a lot of time drinking to try to dull the agony of knowing that.

Sometime around month five, he’s halfway through a ten-mile run when the window display of a thrift shop catches his eye. Panting, he jogs in place for a couple of minutes, trying to decide whether or not to go in. At last, he pushes open the door, points out the camera in the display window, and pays for it on the spot, without bothering to haggle.

The camera’s not perfect — it’s an older model and the lens is cracked, so Erik has to order a new set online and spend a few hours tinkering around with the camera to optimize it. But when it’s done, it functions pretty well, and he’s pleased with the quality of picture that it captures.

For a couple of days, he just fucks around and takes random pictures of whatever catches his eye. But after a while, his choice of subject becomes more deliberate. He snaps a dozen shots of the house sparrows Charles likes so much. He takes a picture of the sunny-side-up eggs he makes in the morning because Charles always used to say they looked like they belonged in some fancy cooking magazine. He wakes up an hour before dawn and takes himself over to the Reservoir in Central Park to get a shot of the sunrise because Charles waxes poetic about sunrises all the time but never manages to drag himself up out of bed in time to see one.

Slowly, his collection of photos grows. Anything he thinks Charles would like to see is added to the file. He takes pictures to remind himself about things he wants to tell Charles later. He takes pictures to reassure himself that there will _be_ a later, that when July 7 finally, finally arrives, Charles will want him back.

He spends so much time counting down the days, and yet, it’s still something of a shock to wake up on July 7 and realize that this is it. He’s survived their six months apart, every terrible, painful, lonely day of it. He can only pray — pray as he hasn’t since he was boy — that this six-month separation won’t turn into forever.

He gets dressed in a daze, only half paying attention to what he’s putting on. He stops at their favorite café to pick up Charles’s favorite, a spiced chai latte. By the time he makes it to the office, the drink’s cooled down, but he hopes the gesture makes some kind of difference. 

Walking back into the office is strange after months away. Thankfully Erik doesn’t run into anyone he knows as he navigates the floors up to Charles’s office. It’s late enough in the day that most people have gone home, so the halls are empty all the way to Charles’s door, which is open. Leaning against the doorframe, Erik raps on the door with his free hand.

“Erik!” Charles stands up instantly, eyes wide. And God is he a sight for sore eyes — he’s wearing a wrinkled t-shirt and jeans and his hair isn’t brushed and he has dark circles under his eyes, and he’s absolutely perfect. Erik’s heart clenches hard in his chest.

“Come in,” Charles says after a moment. “I wasn’t…Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

Erik feels his smile fade slightly. He doesn’t know how to read that comment — Charles had forgotten? Or he’d assumed Erik wouldn’t come? Or he’d _hoped_ Erik wouldn’t come?

 _Don’t be a coward_ , he tells himself sternly. _Say what you came here to say_.

“Spiced chai latte?” he says, offering the cup over.

“Er.” Charles slowly comes around the side of the desk and reaches out to accept. “Thanks.”

Erik drinks him in, trying to pinpoint what’s changed over the last six months and what hasn’t. Charles looks tired and worn, not as happy as Erik would imagine he’d look if he were dating someone new. His hair’s grown out, getting to a length that Charles always used to call ‘unruly.’ He has a bit of stubble on his jaw, too, which is…well, Erik has to admit that it’s hot. Charles is just as ludicrously attractive as Erik remembers — perhaps even more so now, after the long absence.

“Um,” Charles says eventually, not quite looking up.

Erik’s heart gallops wildly in his chest. By contrast, his movements are almost calm as he takes the tea back from Charles, sets it aside on the desk, and pushes Charles back against the wall.

He means for the kiss to be chaste and sweet, but once he’s got his mouth on Charles, he can’t hold back. All of a sudden, he’s cradling Charles’s face in his hands and kissing him with fierce desperation, trying to pour into it everything he’s been holding back for the last six months: _I’m so sorry, I missed you so fucking much, I love you, I can’t be without you, please take me back, please don’t tell me to go_.

Charles doesn’t push him away. He wraps his arms around Erik’s neck and pulls him closer, his body pressed warm and trembling against Erik’s, and when Erik pulls back just slightly, he sees that Charles’s eyes are wet. It makes Erik’s heart quiver, and he can’t look Charles in the eye, can only bend his head and whisper to Charles’s throat, “Please tell me I can come home. Please, Charles. I’ve done what you asked. I know you have, too. I’ve been miserable the entire time, and I can’t take this anymore. Please. Take me back or — ” His breath hitches. “ — cut me loose, but — ”

“Erik.” Charles cups his face and draws it up so that their eyes meet. Charles’s expression is soft and tender and deeply, deeply relieved in a way that makes Erik shudder with both shame and joy. “Please come home with me.”

Erik makes a wounded noise and drags him into another kiss, crushing him close, making them both gasp for breath. Charles is crying now, but he keeps kissing Erik over and over, whispering thanks, and Erik says, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” so many times the words begin to lose their meaning.

“I love you,” Charles whispers at last, stroking his fingers through Erik’s hair. “Let’s go home, please.”

And finally, after what feels like an eternity in an endless, unbearable limbo, the world shifts, and tilts, and starts to make sense again. 

**Author's Note:**

> AND THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. I imagine Erik decides to give up modeling because he never really _loved_ it anyway and becomes a photographer instead. And he spends a lot of time taking a bazillion pictures of Charles being cute and hot in every day life for the rest of their lives <3


End file.
